Equity

Here’s what Mary Ann and Alex got into: Stripe’s valuation recovers: As part of a tender offer, Stripe is now worth $65 billion. The company’s valuation has been on an up-and-down path in recent years as the company works to make its massive bulk fit into the private markets. Alex has thoughts on when it should go public, as you might imagine. Fervo Energy’s $200M+ round: What if the solution to o...

This is our Wednesday show, focused on startup and venture capital news that matters. We pull the top stories from the week thus far, and give them the Equity treatment to put them into proper context. On the show today: Microsoft invests in Mistral AI: Sure, it's not the biggest check, but as regulatory oversight hovers over Microsoft's shoulder, the deal makes sense. Thrasio files for bankruptcy...

This is our Monday show, which looks back at the weekend and ahead to the week. We are back bright and early this week, but we also had an extra episode this weekend digging into the Reddit IPO; you can find that here. On the pod this morning, here’s what we got into: Stocks are mixed around the world as crypto prices gyrate; it’s a big earnings week including data from Workday, Zoom, Unity, Coupa...

Hello, and welcome to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. Weekend team, we have something both short and sweet for you: A dig into the Reddit IPO filing that came out just after we recorded our final, regular episode of the week. Since we could not wait until Monday to talk about the numbers, we have an overview here for yo...

This week Mary Ann, Kirsten, and Alex gathered to chat through a massive sheaf of news. A note before we get to the rundown that Reddit filed to go public after we had recorded this episode, so notes on its IPO filing are not included in this particular episode. Don’t think that we won’t discuss its S-1, it just came too late for this particular entry. More to come! Here’s the rundown: Deals of th...

This is our Wednesday show, in which we talk through the week’s leading startup and venture capital news. This is short week, but there’s still a lot to talk about: Loora’s $12 million round is a reminder that AI is going to find purchase in a host of new markets. The company wants to use AI for conversational language training. Sure, humans are good at that, but they are also expensive. Software...

This is our weekly kick-off show, coming to you Tuesday morning as yesterday was a holiday here in the States. Here’s the rundown: Crypto prices are up, and we’re looking at another busy earnings week. Palo Alto Networks, Sprout Social, Nvidia and Block will report this week. Planity has put together a $48 million Series C, which is a super neat vertical SaaS deal. Software and payments make for a...

On today's news round up, Alex, Mary Ann and Karyne are looking at: Deals of the Week: Rasa’s $30 million Series C had our tongues wagging. The startup is building finservice-focused conversational AI tools. Karyne wanted to talk about the latest round at the intersection of AI and crypto, while Alex wanted to riff on Hippo Harvest’s $21 million round for indoor robot farming. Venture capital’s ye...

Welcome to our Wednesday show, in which we talk through the week’s leading startup and venture capital news. Today we have an absolute pile of material, so let’s get to work: Bret Taylor’s new startup is turning heads: Known for his work at Facebook, Salesforce and OpenAI, Taylor’s new startup Sierra is building conversational AI agents. It has raised a mountain of capital to date, which it might...

This morning we have an interesting mix of stories, which bring technology, politics and AI together in interesting ways. To work: Stocks: It’s another big week for earnings, including Hubspot, Instacart, Monday.com, and Cisco. We should learn a lot about the state of software and hardware sales as last year ended, and what some critical tech names see for the rest of the year. Crypto: Prices are...

Here’s the rundown: Deals of the Week: Adam Neumann wants to buy WeWork from bankruptcy, Starship Technologies raised $90 million for a product that 100% of the crew love, and Ambience Healthcare’s massive $70 million round also got a warm reception for its target market. LatAm Rising: We love Latin America here at Equity, but have been a bit puzzled why its venture capital totals have fallen as f...

This is our startup-focused Wednesday episode, so we’re taking a deep look at a number of startup fundraisings, and the latest from the world of venture capital itself. Startups and capital, it’s our jam! Here’s what we got into on the show today: Goodshuffle raised $5 million, showing that vertical SaaS is far from kaput, even if software valuations remain under strain. SUMA Wealth put $2.2 milli...

This is our Monday show, in which we look back at the weekend and the week ahead. A big thanks to Maggie for stepping back into the Equity seat while Theresa is out today. Here’s what we got into: Stocks are mixed around the world as investors digest the possibility of high interest rates persisting for longer. Crypto price movements seem to have eased in recent weeks in the wake of bitcoin spot E...

The amazing Mary Ann Azevedo was out this week, so Kirsten Korosec, Karyne Levy and Alex Wilhelm took to the mics to chat through the most important tech news of the week. And if you haven't already, head here to listen to our interview with founder and former VC Anshu Sharma about building competitive products and defining new markets. Here's what we got into on the show today: The latest Congres...

This is our interview show, where we sit down with interesting, knowledgeable folks and dive deep into what they are building, designing, or thinking about. Today, we have Anshu Sharma back on the podcast. Last time, the Skyflow CEO riffed with us on interest rates and business cycles. This time, we wanted to talk to him about a theory he recently wrote up for TechCrunch: The Innovator’s Dilemma....

This is our startup-focused, Wednesday episode, so today we’re counting down important venture rounds and chatting our way through other startup and VC news. Here’s the rundown: Plex raises $40M, targets profitability: The media streaming company thinks that it can reach black ink by the end of this year, or early 2025. Not bad for a very expensive industry. Rebellions raises $124M to take on Nvid...

Here's what we got into today: Massive earnings week ahead: Big tech companies are dropping their quarterly results in the coming days, so we'll hear from Microsoft, Apple, Alphabet and Amazon. Other companies are reporting as well, but the bigger the market cap, the bigger the splash. Arc's new mobile app is a cool search concept: Best known for its desktop browser, The Browser Company has a new...

This is our interview show, where we sit down with an interesting, knowledgeable guest and dive deep into their favorite topics. For this weekend’s Special Equity Edition, we invited Gené Teare to come back on the podcast. Longtime listeners will recall that we’ve had Gené on a time or two to chat venture capital data with us, and she’s back to do the same this week! We’re back to dig into Q4 2023...

Here’s what we got up to on our Friday show: Deals of the Week: Plural has a new $432 million fund, Vroom is no longer in the car selling business, oddly, and we chatted through the Fantuan-Chowbus deal. From there we turned to fintech (generally) and Brex (more specifically). In short, Brex is a big company today but not one that is having a lot of fun at the moment, it appears. With reports indi...

This is our startup-focused, Wednesday episode, so today we're counting down important venture rounds, and chatting our way through other startup and VC news. Here's what we got into: Artisse AI's seed round caught our eye for two big reasons: First, its selfie app is cool; and second, despite competing in a crowded space, it's seen revenue climb rapidly. It's gotta be doing something right. Elsew...

Here's the rundown: The Q4 2023 earnings cycle will kick off this week with names like Intel and Visa reporting results. The largest tech companies will start to report next week. Crypto is not enjoying a post-ETF boom for reasons that are yet to be nailed down. Then again, when have crypto price movements ever made complete sense? ElevenLabs is the newest AI unicorn. With $80 million in fresh cap...

This week, Mary Ann Azevedo and Alex Wilhelm took to the mics to chew through funding rounds and trends galore. Enjoy, and don’t forget that our interview with Aileen Lee is here. Pomelo: $40 million more dollars for Latin American fintech? It’s the perfect Mary Ann story. Even better, we got growth data from the company to noodle on. It turns out you can raise up rounds in 2024! Tandem: Alex chos...

This is our interview show, where we sit down with interesting, knowledgeable folks and dive deep into their favorite topics. This time around, we invited Cowboy Ventures’ Aileen Lee to chat through her massive new article concerning the unicorn world. If you didn’t know, it was Lee who initially coined the term “unicorn” in a TechCrunch article back in 2013. Lee talked us through the data and tau...

Here’s what we got into this morning: Vertice raises $25M: The bet here is that companies are willing to pay to have another company, Vertice in this case, to help them find savings in their existing software and cloud spend. Electra snags $330M: Charging EVs is big business, and Electra is wagering that building out its own charging network will pay dividends for a long time into the future. Buil...

Here's what we got into: Stocks are down around the world to start a week that only features a single key earnings report, TSMC this Thursday. Next week really starts the tech reporting deluge, so get ready. In crypto, bitcoin's price failed to pump after its ETF products launched, which surprised some. Also surprising was the value jump that the Ethereum blockchain offers. Buy the rumor, sell the...